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Things of Middle-earth

Song of the Mounds of Mundburg

No few had fallen, renowned or nameless, captain or soldier; for it was a great battle and the full count of it no tale has told. So long afterward a maker 1 in Rohan said in his song of the Mounds of Mundburg: 2

We heard of the horns in the hills ringing,
the swords shining in the South-kingdom.
Steeds went striding to the Stoningland 3
as wind in the morning. War was kindled.
There Théodenfell, Thengling 4 mighty,
to his golden halls and green pastures
in the Northern fields never returning,
high lord of the host. Harding and GuthláfDúnhere and Déorwine, doughty Grimbold,
Herefara and Herubrand, Horn and Fastred,
fought and fell there in a far country:
in the Mounds of Mundburg under mould they lie
with their league-fellows, lords of Gondor.
Neither Hirluin the Fair to the hills by the sea,
nor Forlong the old to the flowering vales
ever, to Arnach, to his own country
returned in triumph; nor the tall bowmen,Derufin and Duilin, to their dark waters,
meres of Morthond under mountain-shadows.
Death in the morning and at day's ending
lords took and lowly. Long now they sleep
under grass in Gondor by the Great River.
Grey now as tears, gleaming silver,
red then it rolled, roaring water:
foam dyed with blood flamed at sunset;
as beacons mountains burned at evening;
red fell the dew in Rammas Echor.

The Return of the King, LoTR Book 5, Ch 6, The Battle of the Pelennor Fields

The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion, by Wayne G Hammond and Christina Scull, Book 3, Ch 6, The King of the Golden Hall

3Stoningland. Represents Rohan Staning-(land), a translation of Gondor. Since this has been 'modernized' (sc. accommodated to the forms of E[nglish]) use the etymological equivalent of 'stone' in the [language of translation], as sten, stein, for the first element.

"Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings", by J.R.R. Tolkien, in The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion, by Wayne G Hammond and Christina Scull